The name of Mikhail Kutuzov, an outstanding military leader of the 19th century, comes to mind every time we speak of the Napoleonic
war of 1812 and the expulsion of the French army from Russia.
Who knows what career he would have chosen if it had not been for his father, a military engineer. Influenced by his father, Mikhail Kutuzov preferred army drills to the glamour of the royal court. He took part in many of the Russian military campaigns of the 18th and 19th centuries and proved he had mastered the art of defensive operations and had learned to spare neither time nor territory in a well-calculated effort to win a victory.
Each of the two wounds he received in combat was lethal but both healed, which moved a surgeon to say providence must be keeping an eye on his patient, saving him for a bigger job. The surgeon's words came true. Kutuzov was an elderly man when Napoleon crossed the Russian border but the army men and civilians alike wanted him to lead the Russian regiments. “That old fox had finally got the commission”, said Napoleon upon hearing that Kutuzov had been made commander-in-chief of the Russian army. “I'll try to prove that the great military leader had a good reason for saying what he said,” Kutuzov said in response to this.
Kutuzov realized Russia was pining for a decisive battle that would check the enemy advance. He engaged the enemy near the village of Borodino, west of Moscow.
The battle of Borodino, which took place in September 1812, was one of the bloodiest on human record. Napoleon described it as the most frightening of all he had fought and said the French showed they merited a victory while the Russians
won the right to be called invincible.
Kutuzov saw his army was ready to fight to the last soldier. But a sober minded glance at the alignment of forces prompted an idea of retreat. He decided to surrender Moscow without a battle so as to save his forces for a longer war against Napoleon. He knew, he told his generals, that some of them would disagree with him but Czar Alexander I and the whole of the nation had empowered him to give orders and he was ordering a retreat. He compared Napoleon to a mighty torrent of water whose flow the Russians were yet unable to stop, and Moscow — to a sponge that would absorb the French troops. As long as it had an army, Russia could hope for a good end to the war but, Kutuzov told his generals, an end to the army spelled an end to Moscow and Russia…
The decision to surrender the national capital was far from easy to make. Kutuzov believed with good reason, however, that the seizure of Moscow would ruin Napoleon and that Moscow would not be sacrificed for nothing.
Napoleon spent a short time in the Russian capital. The fire of Moscow left him without food and winter lodgings. His marauding army was demoralized. He left Moscow for the southern regions of Russia. But this is what Kutuzov had expected him to do. Kutuzov forced the French to take the road they had taken to cut into Russia, a few months before. The hungry and frostbitten French troops shrank in numbers with every day of the retreat, which soon turned into a regular flight. He who taketh a sword, by sword shall he die. Christmas
came, with Russia celebrating the expulsion of the French army.
Kutuzov was promoted to Field Marshal General and made Prince of Smolensk. He was not too happy, though, about the Emperor's decision to follow the French farther west: he wanted no more human losses. Now that the Czar had gone to command the troops, Kutuzov lost interest in the war. His health condition deteriorated and he died at the age of 67, in the city of Bunzlau, on April 16, 1813. His body was brought to St. Petersburg to be buried in St Petersburg's Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan. This is how far Kutuzov took the victorious Russian troops before, the lettering says on a monument in the quiet city of Bunzlau, death put an end to his glorious ventures. He had saved his Motherland and opened a way to the liberation of Europe. May the memory of this hero be blessed in ages…
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